16th – mid-19th century

Adam's Federal Headship and New England Theology: from Cocceius to Edwards and Finney

After the Reformation the idea of covenant developed in Bullinger, Polanus, Gomarus, Cloppenburg and Cocceius: Adam came to be understood not only as the natural but also as the federal head of humanity – its moral and legal representative, whose guilt is imputed to his descendants. Cocceius gave the classic exposition of federal theology: the covenant of works with Adam at creation and the covenant of grace after the fall. In New England Jonathan Edwards, in Freedom of the Will (1754) and the Defense of the Christian Doctrine of Original Sin, taught that fallen humanity is free to act as it chooses but is morally unable: what it lacks is not the ability but the desire to do good; he explained the transmission of sin realistically. Later New England theologians moved closer to Arminius, and Charles Finney denied original sin.